Thank You, Mr. Woodchuck

Phenomenal nut and seed crop this year. Unprecedented in my memory

For unplugging the electric fencer so we could spend the whole day walking and repairing fence. It was a beautiful day.....but.....I hadn't planned on spending it lugging a bucket full of fencing tools all the way around the field.

I thought we only had pale touch-me-not, but look, orange

At least only heifer got out......when I saw her on the lawn this morning I knew the day was going to take an unplanned direction.

Liz 'n' Jade are vacationing at Peck's this week and already started out with a little direction change as well. The cabin they rented was about wrecked by last week's catastrophic storms and nobody called. At this point they are getting put into a different cabin...smaller....less isolated...may not have a stove and nights are getting real cold.

Been complaining about no monarchs this fall, but we found one

However, you CAN drive to it, which would be a massive plus in my book...

Looking forward to lots of pics and stories when they come home next week.

 

Help, all you smart folks, what berry is this?

And, as always I lugged the camera along with the bucket of staples, pliers and insulators, so here are some pics.

Springs Work

All right, you win

Click to embiggen

Got up early yesterday, before anybody else, and kicked the housework in the fanny...such of it as I actually do anyhow...I often qualify for the Good Housekeeping seal of disapproval.

This was so as to be able to go out and help the boss do actual outdoor work. We finally had the weather for it.

We headed up the heifer pasture hill to start cutting brush out of the fences. There is always plenty of it and I gotta say, those darned rose bushes drew first blood, on me at least.

Getting ready to grow over all the fences

I vaguely remember reading during my kidhood, that wild rugosa roses made great fences. You could get them real cheap and never have to dig in another post.

Whoever came up with that theory needs to come out and help with our brush cutting efforts. Those blasted roses take over a pasture, forming gigantic clumps the size of a house trailer. They spread in every way plants can be spread.

They are vicious.

Oh, they have their uses. They are gorgeous in June when the whole valley is redolent with their seductive fragrance, and they trail bridal veils of blossoms over every fence and field. They provide cover and feed for wildlife and birds, and are useful for stabilizing fragile ground.

No grass yet

Nevertheless, they are an invasive pest and they cause us plenty of extra work. They will have to be lopped out of the fences at least three times this year. Every year. At least.

I can never resist this old truck

Far from replacing fences, they utterly overwhelm them.

Habitats are Us

I accompanied Alan on yet another fencing expedition yesterday and found great joy, greater perhaps because it was entirely unexpected. We had chased or rescued cows all the day before....no one was in a very great mood.

We were no more than got half way along the first line of fence, when we found we were surrounded by birds. Migration is in full swing and the trees were bristling with gold finches and fall warblers. Soft, squeaky pishing lured them close enough to narrow down the selection of species.

By way of their incessant singing and iBird Pro on my phone the majority were discovered to be magnolia warblers. Other yellow-rumped species were probably also represented.

At the top of the hill there were flocks of flickers, rafts of robins, blue jays abounding, and lots and lots of other birds everywhere we looked. 

It would be hard to estimate how many birds we saw, but there were at least hundreds. I imagine there were many more that we didn't see.

I suspect the sheer numbers of birds and the variety of species are because of the large assortment of habitats available here on the farm or on surrounding abandoned farm land. There are open pastures, dense woods, open woods, brushy areas growing up to woods, and scrub grassland. Something for everyone, whether it is clusters of intense black riverbank grapes, a plethora of insects, or grain left undigested by the cattle. 

It sure was a treat for a birder...and I can't say enough about iBird pro. You do have to narrow down the selection of possible IDs for an unknown bird, but once you do, the calls and songs feature is invaluable.

Teh Kitteh Olympics

The sport is fencing. 

No foils allowed. 

The participant is Chain Saw, 

a domestic short hair from the USA.

 Gentlemen

Choose your weapons

 Our contestant caught in a pensive moment

 Perfect form in the "follow the farmer out to the field" event

 Sails smoothly past the "meadow hazard" with grace and aplomb

Carried victorious from the field in the arms of his supporters
*click to embiggen*

***And now, for the behind the scenes commentary....actually Alan and I went out to start....it is going to be a big job...putting the electric wire back up where the deer ripped it down. Chainsaw decided to tag along. In typical cat fashion he persisted all the way to the top of the hill and then petered out and lay around crying...."oh, I'm so tired...I, gasp, can't make it any farther.....gasp, gasp..."

So Alan carried him down. There were a lot of raptors around and he didn't want him to be eaten. Silly cat.

Da Troof and Nuttin but da Troof

Not the truants, just some cows and heifers eating breakfast

Yesterday's post featured the girls leaning on sorting sticks and about a football field's worth of temporary electric fence. If you haven't read the comments suggesting possible scenarios...they are excellent and worth your time.

Speaking of temporary, that fence was VERY temporary. Within ten minutes after we finished using it there was nothing to show for its ephemeral existence but a bucket full of rolls of wire with a LOT of surveyor's tape on it and a couple of bundles of fence posts.

See lightning fried one of the fencers and let the big, horned heifers out into the night. 


I am honestly afraid of those big horned heifers. They are big, and, well, they have horns.

Thus even looking for them wasn't high on my agenda. However, they very obligingly, after eating some hostas, wandering all over the lawns leaving fertilizer, and putting hoof prints all over everything, went up in the unused pony yard and lay down.

All we had to do to catch them was close the gate. 

However, they couldn't stay there. No watering trough, no shelter, way too small etc.

How to get them down the great distance between where we wanted them and where they were. Four driveways, multiple stretches of lawn, only a few of us to chase them, no horses, no ropes, no working dogs any more.

And I am afraid of them. It was an uncomfortable conundrum.

I thought about it all through milking and breakfast after chores and finally came up with an idea. Maybe we could build an electric fence out of the lightest wire we could get, some step-in posts, which we already had and flag the heck out of it so it looked like a lot more than it was. We could make a sort of alley to guide them back to the heifer barn.

We proceeded to construct just that and lined up the cheap help for the melee. 

There actually were a few moments of excitement...enough for this week's Farm Side at least, but they did mind the "fence" and we got them back where they belong without too awful much drama.

Can we say thankful....why yes we can.

The Drought

The grass in the shady, damp lane is much taller than it is up where the sun gets at it all day.

Is going to hurt pretty much everyone even if it starts raining all across the country within the next five minutes. Corn is already being imported from Brazil and our grain price is sky rocketing. I shudder to think what food prices will be this fall, winter, and next year.


Here in Upstate NY we saw a bit of what it has already done when Alan and I went out to walk and clear electric fence yesterday. We (really he...I carried tools, kept him company and took pictures) inspected and cut brush out of the wires, propped up a couple of tired posts and fixed this and that. We got over about half of it...it's a big field...before the old lady petered out from the hot sun and we came back down. It was time for him to go get Becky anyhow and the boss needed him to help unload hay that he had baled

Anyhow, the grass was as curly as the fur on Gil's back and not much longer. There were more wasps and bees than weeds and thistles.


This is not at all normal. The cows have been out of that field for weeks...maybe even a month. In an average year, even in the doldrums of summer, there would be grass at least up to the top of your ankle and weeds as high as your head anywhere the dirt was exposed by cows making paths and such. 


Nada.


We did see a nice selection of birds though. Lots of gold finches, indigo buntings, turkey vulture, red-tailed hawk, mourning doves, brown thrashers, song sparrows, some unidentifiable small warblers, crows, starlings, pigeons, cardinals and probably a couple of others I am forgetting. No good pics though. They weren't feeling friendly and the light was so bright...

We will try to finish up today. The cows will get a few days supplemental grazing while the other field recovers. It is just barely worth the effort though.....

Fencing And Putting on Pants

Heifer pasture is done. They would have let the ladies out yesterday, but they didn't get it done until three. They figured, and probably rightly, that the lassies would prefer to stay out once let out, and we didn't want to be milking at midnight. Maybe today.


Then they started the big pasture fence. That has sat two years unused thanks to the horrific weather and the fact that it is a b***ch to  build, up and down ravines and slate cliffs and all. Gonna get built this year though, some how, some way. Our hay guy is out of hay; last load delivered this morning. We aren't out of cows and they have to eat something.


The wooden cowboy got his pants put on yesterday. They go pretty well with his bright red shirt and  blue bandanna.  Alan figures on painting him a nice rodeo belt buckle with a bronc in the center and we still have to paint his fence and boots and hat...oh, and finish up his face. He looks kind of silly with just a white smiley face.

And that's all the news that's fit to print. Have a good one.

Still Fencing, No Swords

Staples though, and insulators. Patching wire. Chopping bush. Freezing cold. And taking pictures. Wrenched my stupid foot the other day stepping out of a cow stall. It was pretty ouchy walking around with Alan making up the fence...well, really he did most of the work and I cut brush and kept him company. Another couple days and that one will be done anyhow. Two more to go.